


As Long as You’re Not Tired Yet of Talking

by ViaLethe



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22606321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: When Steve Rogers tells her, “Don’t be a stranger,” as they’re all going their own ways after New York, it makes her want to laugh.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 18
Kudos: 22
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	As Long as You’re Not Tired Yet of Talking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fernstrike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fernstrike/gifts).



When Steve Rogers tells her, “Don’t be a stranger,” as they’re all going their own ways after New York, it makes her want to laugh.

 _What else could I possibly be,_ she thinks; what else would he ever want her to be.

But he’s solid and earnest and present in every moment in a way that’s so antithetical to every other comrade she’s ever had that she can’t ruin him by asking.

“Send me a postcard,” she says instead, tilting her head towards the bike he’s clearly dying to ride off on, her smile practiced and polished and just enough of a smirk to be charming.

“I will,” he says, looking her straight in the eye, and then he’s gone.

She knows he won’t, but that’s okay.

_You don’t want to know what else I could be._

***

The postcard comes to her eventually by way of Tony - Tony, who puts his name fifty feet high on skyscrapers; Tony, who’s so easy to find - and gets passed along by Pepper, capable and efficient as always.

It’s a picture, not of anything the name ‘Captain America’ might bring to mind - no eagles, no flags, no USO dancing girls - just a national park, one of those ‘forests and waterfalls’ scenes. Probably an Ansel Adams shot.

On the reverse, no words; just her name, _Natasha:_ and a drawing. A sketch of a tent, and a little campfire, and in the background a little figure that could only be Steve, sitting on a rock staring out over the vista.

 _He looks lonely,_ she thinks, even in simple penciled lines; even from a distance.

The apartment where she lives when she’s not on missions is pared bare, minimal to the bones. Nothing she can’t afford to lose. She sticks the postcard into the corner of the bedroom window frame, where the light will hit it in the mornings, and forgets about it.

***

She keeps her phones carefully regimented - one for Shield business, one high tech Stark Industries prototype that mostly gets texts from Pepper, a half dozen burners for various projects she has simmering, and one for everything else - which basically means just Clint and Laura, since they’re the only ones who have her personal number.

Until now, at least.

“Natasha?” Steve’s voice sounds tired. A little unsure.

“Rogers? Are you okay? Do you need backup?” she asks, reaching for her Shield device, ready to send out an alert.

“No, no, it’s nothing - I’m fine,” he says, and she hears a sigh come down the line. She can almost picture him standing at a phone booth on the side of a dusty road, though she knows it’s silly. “I just...wanted to talk to someone who knew my face from somewhere other than a screen, I guess.”

She thinks, for a second, of brushing him off; however much she might understand the sentiment, this isn’t her job. Instead, she gives in, and settles into stillness. “Okay. How’s the road trip?”

He talks for a while about inconsequential things; the people he’s met, the art gallery he stopped at last week, the way he’d forgotten how big the Rockies are. She makes all the appropriate responses, and sits, and thinks about _why her_ ; thinks, but will never ask, because all the while his voice gets warmer, and more solid. Back to baseline.

She does have to ask one question, though, before they hang up - “Where did you get this number, anyway?”

“Fury,” he says, and all she can think is _of course_. She hadn’t know Fury had the number either, but that much, at least, is less surprising.

***

“Sometimes I wonder how I ended up here,” Steve says, his voice coming out slightly tinny on speakerphone. Lying on her bed, staring into the darkness of her bedroom cut with the lights of passing traffic, Nat thinks of all the the things she could say; _Well, Shield found your crashed plane and hauled you out of the ocean_ is probably a little too literal for him to find amusing, and _you drove a motorcycle across the country because you’re running away_ is closer to the truth, but not the kind of thing she feels like she can say, not yet.

“Me too,” she says, and waits. That’s how this works; he talks and she responds, briefly, carefully, just enough to let him know _yes, I’m here, you’re safe._ That way, so is she.

Instead, he surprises her. “You?” he says, his voice sounding amused. “You’re where you are because it’s where you want to be. If nobody touches you, they can’t hurt you. And you can’t hurt them.”

She breathes - in, out - and blinks into the darkness, willing back the lash of irritation that stings through her, riding out the anger that comes with truth. It isn’t his fault if he’s hit the target dead center on his first shot. “It’s true. Safe.”

She can hear him on the other end of the line, weighing, measuring, considering, his breathing telling her his thoughts bounced across satellites and electronic sparks into her ears. In the end, he lets her off. “I keep feeling like I want to go home,” he says. “And then I remember I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“What, you don’t want to go live with Tony in Stark Tower?” she asks, light, teasing. Just right, until it isn’t, until she feels a twist of shame that she’s still pushing away when that isn’t fair. “Seriously though, just say the word and I’ll come get you, meet you with a quinjet. We can put the bike in back.” She waits a moment for his response, two, counting out the heartbeats. “Might have to wait a couple hours, though.”

He laughs at that, a bare huff of sound that hardly qualifies, but she’ll take it. “I might take you up on that offer sometime.”

“It’s always open,” she says, and surprises herself by meaning it.

***

She helps him move into a sparse apartment in DC when he finally decides to come in to roost; there’s nobody else there but a couple of overly friendly Shield agents, and she pulls open box after box of home goods, recognizing all too well the same standard, templated things Shield sets up all their safe houses with.

 _He’s just what everyone else expects him to be,_ she thinks, wandering from room to room after the agents have left, seeking out the bare handful of things that make up the man; a few sketchbooks and a pack of pencils, a book of nature photographs, a bomber jacket that has to be vintage.

In the darkness of her own apartment ( _minimal, not bare,_ she thinks), she stares out the window as if she could see across town to his, and listens to the phone ring against her ear. “Just checking in,” she says, when he picks up. “Making sure you’re okay over there.”

“It’s no Brooklyn, but it’ll do,” he says, and lets the silence sit for a moment. “Shield’s trying to insist that I come in for weekly therapy sessions.”

She shrugs. “You could probably use some therapy.”

“ _This_ is therapy,” Steve says, voice taking on that edge it gets when he’s made a choice. “Seems to me it makes more sense to talk to a friend than a stranger.”

 _Friend,_ Nat thinks, rolling the concept around in her brain. “All I do is listen,” she tells him, shrugging again as if she could ward off his words with her body. A warning as much as anything.

“Maybe that’s all we really need. For somebody to hear us.”

“I hear you,” she says, and it doesn’t come out as lightly as she’d intended.

It doesn’t occur to her until they hang up that for once, she'd called him.


End file.
